HN Explorer

Ask HN: Is it safe to drink tap water or R/O water better?

3 points by earth2mars ↗ HN
Here in US, can we trust government and authorities to drink tap water or recommend any water filters or R/O system for safe water. Concerned about artificially removing natural minerals at the same time drinking contaminated water in pipelines or process.

3 comments

[ 1.9 ms ] story [ 20.3 ms ] thread
davismwfl
The vast majority of water in the US is safe to drink straight from the tap. Each local government has different quality standards but all are supposed to meet the federal guidance as a bare minimum. Depending on their source of water too they may add different minerals or chemicals to treat the water. Yes, the U.S. has had stupidity like Flint, but I'd call that an exception to what is otherwise quite a safe system as a whole.

Is R/O better? Depends on your definition of better, but R/O is obviously very clean and safe to drink, although I have heard some people say they don't like the taste or "how" it feels. R/O removes a lot of the minerals so it does taste different for sure. Some people can't stand their water to be hard and some don't like soft water, so I think that is preference for many people.

earth2mars
the reason i ask is, if i search HN for drinking water (https://hn.algolia.com/?query=drinking%20water&sort=byPopula...) I see so many results where it says the tap water is not safe due and doesn't meet EPA standards. some even trying to find legal advice on reddit. https://old.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/cjkbgu/city_go... So, I wonder, if I can buy R/O which is making me safe vs. not causing more harm by removing essential minerals needed for body which are found in water.
davismwfl
I get it, but I think the catch is if I look for data on any topic on the internet it is easy to bias the results to be highly negative or positive, but if you start really investigating you will find that it is generally not nearly as bad or good as it seems. Even if at face value 100% of the negative stories are accurate and true, which I doubt is the case, it is a small area of concern for the Country as a whole. There are over 330 million people in the US and rarely do you see or hear of disease from drinking water in the US. Most water borne disease in the U.S. is associated with fresh lake swimming or beach swimming during high bacteria days. Now, that isn't to say we haven't had major stupidity over the years, the Erin Brockovich story is a great example of major drinking water contamination that hurt many people and led to many deaths. GE has also had to spend billions of dollars cleaning up rivers in NY from dumping of chemicals once thought safe.

My 2 cents, is you should evaluate your specific water and area to be safe (it is fairly inexpensive). For example, where I live in Florida we are on well water which comes from the aquifer which basically the vast majority of Florida's drinking water comes from. The quality of the water varies through the year, and changes quite a bit based on rainfall etc. We use a storage tank to off-gas the water and then a series of filters and a softener to improve the water quality (I installed UV this year too). I also send our water out yearly to get it tested by a certified lab (was recommended to me to do that), and we always send 2 samples, one from inside the house and one direct from the well. This helps us determine the true water quality and whether we have a system issue etc. I just had this done like 2-3 weeks ago for this year, and direct from the well was perfectly healthy to drink and well within all EPA guidelines, and our filtering did improve the water some but left the minerals mostly unchanged which is by design in my setup.

R/O will clean your water very well, I looked at installing a whole house system in the past, but it also removes a lot of the minerals that are good for us too. So since our water is clean we chose to not get an R/O. On my boat, I have a water maker which essentially is an R/O type system and I can tell the difference between it and my house, but honestly I have no preference myself. R/O systems do require more maintenance and cost more to operate, but I cannot say anything bad about them if you are worried about water quality. The only bad thing is they are not cheap to acquire or maintain for a whole house system.

edit to add this: BTW -- if you are on city/county water and not well, the city/county is required to maintain quality reports and usually they test daily multiple times a day. I dated a girl one time who works for a city doing that type of work. You can request the reports from them as they are public record. Then you can also have your house water tested for usually <$100 at a certified lab and know for sure where you stand.